Skeletal Cases

Want to develop students' investigatory skills?
Then instead of presenting complete case-studies, provide only the initial
"presenting information", and only add to it in response to their questions.
There are a number of variations on the theme:

Background: Provide just the superficial
information with which a student might be confronted on first acquaintance with the
situation. Feed in additional background only if asked about it: this is useful for fairly
basic professional skills of gathering data on cases. After a set period of time or number
of questions, see how efficiently the students have got at the important material.

Investigation: A more sophisticated
variation, perhaps starting from a higher information base, is to offer to answer
questions, but only when the student explains why she is asking. This
identifies the issue of testing hypotheses, and the question of what evidence might be
gathered in order to test an hypothesis. It applies clearly to medical diagnosis, but it
could also apply to fault-finding in a computer network, or a car engine.

Potential accounts: Almost the reverse
strategy, particularly useful on in-service courses with practitioners who are locked into
recipes of the order of "When such-and-such happens, I always...": outline the
presenting situation and asked them to multiply as many potential explanations as
possible, before eliminating any of them. This is a good exercise for the divergent thinkers in
the group, and for any occasion when you wish to encourage what John Keats called
"negative capability"—the art of not jumping to conclusions, but tolerating
uncertainty and confusion where necessary.

Raw data: a variant on the above is to start
with raw statistical or documentary data.

Of course you don't always have to generate the problem yourself. If you are teaching people with some experience under their belts, they are very likely to come with their own real-world cases, and those can generate some of the most fruitful teaching sessions you will ever have. (Assuming that the "cases" have not merely been contrived to test you out). However, don't just engage with the case yourself, and don't simply "throw it open" to everyone. The idea is that the process
can work on two levels (at least);

the substantive level of working on the case under discussion, and also

the process level of discovering the best way(s) of approaching that discussion.

If you miss out on reflection, with the class, on the second level you lose much of the benefit.

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